Biggest Debts Show 'Competent Financial Management': claim

If the UK economy is best placed to withstand the economic crisis, can anyone explain this table from last week's Der Spiegel?Global Financial Injection (billion euros) from Bank guarantees, buying up of bad credit and capital injection)

CommentGovernment spokespeople may respond that we are the world’s biggest borrowers because the British economy is so strong after ten years of Labour financial management that everybody wants to lend us the money, or some such spin.

The harsh fact remains that our economic ‘management’ has created the need to borrow more than anybody else and the rest of the world’s economic management requires them to borrow less.

As for ‘bringing forward’ public works projects, even if the planning permissions and public enquiries have been completed, they are unlikely to have an impact on the economy for many, many months, possibly years (especially if the planning circusses begin).

Such ideas for policies could be filed under ‘Pending projects; short-term ‘news management’, among the spinners’ filing cabinets.